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The Cayman XT GPU of the AMD Radeon HD 6900-series is a different design to that of the end units, which allow for twice as much work per clock to be sent to the stream processors than before. Although there are 64 fewer stream processors in the GPU than in the AMD’s previous –generation top-end card , the Radeon HD 5870 1HB each processor is capable of the high-precision maths that only a fifth of the HJD 5870 1GBs units could manage.

AMD claims that the new lay out is 10 percent faster per square millimeter of GPU die than that of the HD 5870 1GB. Despite the naming of AMD’s HD 6900 series this GPU is successor to the HD 5870 1GB. The GPU has a frequency of 880MHz and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM operating at 1.375GHz (5.5GHz effective) over a 265-bi memory interface. This may sound paltry compared with the 384-bit interfaces of the GTX 570 1.3GB, and the GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB but the high memory frequency gives the HD 6970 2GB a respectable 176GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

At 1920x1080 the HD 6970 2GB traded blows with the GTX 570 1.3GB which currently costs less. In Armall, we saw identical minimum frame rates from both cards, while Black Ops ran similarly fast on both cards, with minimum of 95fps from the Radeon and of 94 fps from the GeForce. The GTX 570 1.3GB racedinto the lead in Dirt 2 with a minimum of 91fps rather than 75fps and was 4fps faster in Bad Company 2 with a minimum of 41fps.

When we increased the resolution to 2560x1600 neither the HD 6970 2 GB not the GTX 570 1.3GB could cope with Armall or Bad Company2. Both the cards managed the same 18fps minimum in the former game, while the GTX 570 1.3GB managed a minimum of 211fps compared to 19fps in bad company 2. We saw the usual pattern of Dirt 2 favoring GeForce and Black Ops favoring a Radeon Card., however and both the games ran at very high frame rates on both the cards. The folding outputs of HD 6970 2GB was dire, however, with just 4328ppd generated, for a total system power draw of 294W. Even the Geforce GTX 260 768MB was faster at folding, and that is a 3 year old card. The GTX 570 1.3GB may have consumed 24W more when gaming than the HD 6970 2GB, but both reference coolers were reasonably quiet for such powerful cards.

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GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB cards used to cost slightly more than the HD 6970 2GB cards, but a recent price drop for graphics cards made by NVIDIA has made its card even more attractive. Its slightly faster than the HD 6970 2GB overall, if you already own an HD 6970 2GB, only a GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB or one of the leviathan dual GPU cards represents a significant upgrade-its still a very capable card so we doubt that you’ll be retiring it any time soon.